Footwear Industry Performance Declined in January 2026, Kemenperin Reveals the Cause

JAKARTA - The performance of the footwear industry is expected to be at a declining level, alias contraction, in January 2026. This was revealed by the Ministry of Industry (Kemenperin) in the January 2026 IKI Release today.

Ministry of Industry spokesman Febri Hendri Antoni Arif revealed that the performance of the footwear industry was below the 50 level, alias not expansive, at the beginning of this year.

"The three subsectors that experienced contraction below 50 are the leather industry, leather goods and footwear (KBLI 15), the wood industry subsector, wood and cork goods (excluding furniture) and woven goods from bamboo, rattan and the like (KBLI 16) and the third is the computer industry, electronic and optical goods (KBLI 26)," said Febri in the January 2026 IKI Release in Jakarta, Thursday, January 29.

In terms of export-oriented industries and the domestic market, said Febri, the value of IKI is still expanding and reaching 54.62 points. This figure is up 2.26 points compared to December 2025 which was 52.36.

"The same thing also happened to domestic market-oriented industrial companies, the IKI value is still expanding and increasing by 1.92 points to 53.25," he said.

However, Febri admitted that although the value of IKI exports in January 2026 was relatively higher than before, there were several export-oriented industrial subsectors that actually experienced contraction at the beginning of this year.

"The first is the export-oriented footwear industry subsector that is contracting. Meanwhile, the domestic market-oriented footwear industry subsector is actually expanding, as is the export-oriented basic metal industry," said Febri.

"While (the basic metal industry) is domestically oriented, it is expansive. The same is true for the repair industry, the installation of machines, tools, it is an export-oriented contraction, while the domestic-oriented one is expansive," he continued.

According to Febri, the performance of the export-oriented industrial sub-sector is still depressed due to global uncertainties to the tariff war between countries.

"The export-oriented industrial subsector is still in preparation to see how global uncertainties affect their demand, global uncertainties include geopolitical turmoil and tariff wars between countries," he explained.

Previously, the Indonesian Association of Cooperatives (Aprisindo) conveyed that the performance of the national footwear industry was still overshadowed by a number of structural challenges that could potentially hinder the growth of the sector this year. Two of them are related to labor issues (labor issues) and logistics efficiency.

Aprisindo Chairman Anton J. Supit revealed that the issue of labor is the most crucial factor for the sustainability of labor-intensive industries such as footwear.

Given that the characteristics of the Indonesian employment structure are still dominated by workers with secondary education and the informal sector. This means that 60 percent of the total workforce in the sector are informal workers.

"So this labor-intensive industry is still needed. That is, especially commodities like shoes that all over the world are still spinning, people are still alive, he won't be barefoot, he needs shoes, yes," said Anton at the XI Aprisindo Congress in Jakarta, quoted Thursday, January 22.

Anton added that from the perspective of economic contribution, the footwear industry also has a significant impact on employment absorption and people's purchasing power.

With export values having reached more than 7 billion US dollars as of November 2025, the contribution of labor costs is estimated to reach tens of trillions of rupiah per year.

Apart from the labor issue, another major challenge comes from the logistics side. The footwear industry is highly dependent on the timeliness of production and delivery (just in time), so that delays in the supply of raw materials and distribution of goods can incur significant additional costs.

Production delays often force companies to work overtime or even air freight, which is much more expensive.

In fact, he compared Indonesia's logistics conditions with competing countries such as Vietnam and China, which are considered more ready in terms of infrastructure and distribution efficiency.

Therefore, Aprisindo encourages the government to carry out regulatory and governance improvements, including simplifying licensing processes such as amdal, to reduce operational barriers in the field.

"If it's like in Vietnam, China is really just in time. Their logistics are smooth. In Vietnam, it's twice as efficient. Automatically, this logistics, right, we pay more expensive," he said.